


Joining the Dance

by kageygirl



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kageygirl/pseuds/kageygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a day at the beach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joining the Dance

The sun is shining down from a clear blue sky, the breeze is warm, the waves are breaking industriously over the shore... and Will has sand in his shoes.

"I have sand in my shoes," he says, conversationally. The day is too gorgeous to incite any kind of rancor, really, but he feels a vague need to share.

"So take them off," Magnus says from behind him, a hint of humor coloring her voice. Will turns, and she raises an eyebrow at him, smiling gently as she kneels in the sand.

He raises an eyebrow right back at her. "And risk a reprimand for unprofessional work attire?"

She huffs out a laugh, cheeks glowing. "It's dreadful to work for such an autocrat, isn't it?" She stand up and sets a hand on her hip, cocking her head to one side. "Will it help if I take mine off, as well?"

Will grins back at her and shrugs, hands in his pockets. "I'm not sure. I might pass out from the shock."

She gives him a look that's only mildly threatening, and hands him the sampling kit before dropping down on a sand dune. Ostensibly, they're here to see if this beach and the surrounding waters would make a good habitat for a colony of mock turtles, but Magnus is uncharacteristically taking her time about the survey.

He's been considering saying something--letting her know that he's noticed--but it's only a passing thought. He's pretty sure that the nice day at the beach is largely for his benefit, and calling her on it would just seem ungrateful.

Instead, he settles down beside her on the dune, being careful as he lays down the sample kit, and watches her unlace her short hiking boots. She pulls off her socks and stuffs them into the boots, rolls up the cuffs of her jeans, and then retrieves a bottle of sunscreen from the messenger bag they'd brought along. Before spreading sunscreen on her ankles and the tops of her feet, she looks sideways at him, as if waiting for Will to make a crack about her fair skin. He just shakes his head.

"We went to a water park one summer, when I was a kid," he says, and doesn't add _before_ , but he suspects she gets it anyway. "It had these tiny little rivers you could walk through between the rides, instead of going barefoot on the hot cement. I must have run through every single one." He chuckles. "And then I had to stay inside for a week, because all the sunscreen I'd been slathered with wore off, and my feet were so badly burned I couldn't wear shoes."

She winces in sympathy, and Will's eyes are drawn to her cheeks again. "Actually, you're getting a bit of sun yourself," he says.

She lays the backs of her fingers against her own cheek, frowning a little, and then hands him the sunscreen. "May I ask you to touch me up? I'm afraid I don't do very well without a mirror."

Her eyes are as blue as the ocean, glinting like the sunlight dancing along the waves.

The bottle is warm in his hands, the sunscreen gone slippery in the heat, and he's careful when he lets a little bit run out onto his fingers. With his right hand, he brushes the fringe of her hair out of the way, and then he trails the sunscreen across her forehead, working it evenly over her skin.

The next dollop goes down the bridge of her nose, and then out across her her pinking cheeks. He has to resist a wild urge to give the end of her nose a playful tap, but she grins anyway, as if she can read his mind. He pauses, cradling her face, his thumb smoothing across her cheek. "Hey, I'm working on my fingerpainting masterpiece here, and you're messing with the canvas."

"Terribly sorry," she says, without a trace of remorse, and adopts an overly solemn expression that has Will grinning, this time.

"Stop that," he says, and to his surprise, she does, her face relaxing, though her eyes shine even brighter than before.

He finishes with a quick swipe over her chin, and this time, the temptation is to tip her head just so, to brush his lips across hers, feather-light, just once. It comes from a false sense of intimacy, he knows, this feeling that it would be okay to kiss her now; he was, after all, raised in a culture where touching someone's face is a more-than-casual act.

And yet, he's not moving his hand, and she's not backing away. She parts her lips, and he can feel her breath against his face, even with the ocean breeze playing about them, and maybe there's nothing false about any of this, except for the way he's resisting it.

He leans in for that feather-light kiss, and she gives him that kiss, and more besides. There's a warmth rolling through him that has nothing to do with wind or waves, sun or sand, and yet everything to do with all of them, all part of this single, shining moment.

She draws back--her hands have ended up planted by his knees--and he feels the sand shift under him with the movement. Or possibly that's just his world. The smile on her lips is reflected in her eyes, gleaming and brilliant. "Still thinking about your shoes?" she asks, her voice light but quiet, though they have the beach to themselves.

"You're kidding, right?" he says. His hand has slipped to the hollow where her neck meets her shoulder, and when he flexes it gently, she leans into his palm. Will shakes his head. "I wouldn't swear to it that I still have feet."

"Best sort that out, then," Magnus says, and stands up, brushing sand from the seat of her pants. She backs away from him, wading into the water, the surf foaming around her bare ankles. With both hands held out in front of her, she beckons, her cheeks glowing again as she grins at him. "You've got catching up to do."

And catch up he does, though somewhere in the scramble to ditch his footwear, he ends up losing a sock.

The trade-off is unbelievably worth it.


End file.
